governor who was a native son. This policy, I must say, has not the unanimous approval of the native sons. I repeat, we believe both in giving and in receiving. There are more judges on the federal bench today who received their training at Ann Arbor than from any other university in the country. There are today twentysix members of the national Congress who received their training at Ann Arbor-more than from any other university in the whole country. And while we are training these leaders in national affairs, we are richly rewarded in the men we take in from the outside. Several of the superintendencies of our larger cities are held by men from other states. Three years ago, when the city of Detroit was searching for a man to take charge of her great system of schools, she went west and brought home from Denver, Colo., our present superintendent, Charles E. Chadsey. The most American thing in America is our public-school system. Nowhere is the work of public education better illustrated than in Michigan. Our state university, with over seven thousand students from every country in the world; our normal-school system, with more than four thousand students; our agricultural college, with an enrolment of two thousand students; a group of splendid denominational colleges, with two thousand students; our public schools with over five hundred thousand children in attendance all these testify to our conviction that the safety of our country demands that "schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." We tax ourselves to support our educational establishment, not, primarily, to give the young people certain advantages. We regard our tax as an investment which richly repays us in the quality of the citizens we get to take part in our democracy. We believe that the most expensive liability a state can have is an ignorant citizen. When I hear the reckless attack made at times by hostile critics of our schools, I wonder what counsel gives them inspiration. That our schools are not perfect, no one will deny. But when I think how young the institution is, and what prodigious burdens have been heaped upon it all at once, and when I see with my own eyes with what marvelous skill the schools of the country discharge their responsibility, I declare to you that the American public school challenges the admiration of the whole world. A little while ago I visited the schools of Calumet, that wonderful mining camp in northern Michigan. I found there in one schoolroom boys and girls representing thirty different nationalities. The wall before them was draped with the stars and stripes. I saw the boys and girls rise and salute their flag. And then in a reverent spirit they sang: My Country, 'tis of thee, Of thee I sing. I have heard our national anthem sung many a time before, but since that day it has had for me a new meaning. Go into the schools of Detroit some evening and you will find there ten thousand men and women who, at public expense, are being.given the fundamentals of an education. Many of these are foreigners who are being taught our language and who are being taught the meaning of American citizenship. My friends, I will close as I began: Michigan appreciates the honor of entertaining this great meeting of the nation's educational leaders. We welcome you the more because you are engaged in a work close to the hearts of the people of Michigan-a work we regard as the most important business in our country. We welcome you because your presence will be an inspiration to us this week, this year, and the years to come. In behalf of the sterling citizenship of our state; in behalf of twenty thousand teachers -the most enthusiastic, loyal, and devoted teachers that ever blessed a great state; in behalf of one million of the most splendid boys and girls; in behalf of the superintendents and teachers of Michigan here present, I extend to you a hand of welcome. RESPONSE TO ADDRESS OF WELCOME FRANCIS G. BLAIR, STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, SPRINGFIELD, ILL. Speaking for the members of this great Association, I cannot assume that your welcome extends any farther than to us as a body of men and women engaged in a great work. I cannot assume that your welcome extends to the ideas which we bring, to the educational programs and resolutions which we shall here formulate. This fact is not mentioned as a matter of complaint, but rather to raise a question which strikes at the very spirit of American life. It is charged that the people of the United States have scant regard for the opinions of their leaders in any field of thought, that they treat with indifference or contempt the opinions of experts, that they resent authority, and show little respect for law. I cannot, of my own knowledge or experience, assert that this attitude is peculiar to America, but some who are widely traveled and deeply learned in the affairs of nations declare that nowhere else in the world are the leaders of thought-the experts-held in such light regard as in this great democracy. In the face of this great world-crisis, it is becoming in us as the leaders of education in this great democracy to review seriously our educational creeds and philosophies to see whether this gross national defect is in any way chargeable as an outcome of our educational system. Of course, some of it results directly from the very form of our government. Its cornerstone is the Declaration of Independence, whose glowing lines declare "that all men are created equal and are endowed with certain inalienable rights." No one who believes in the true spirit of a democracy will in any way try to tarnish the luster of those shining, glorious words, but he will stupidly err if in accepting the doctrine that all men are created equal he concludes therefrom that the judgments of all men are equally trustworthy upon all questions. No one will lightly cast a doubt upon the soundness of this doctrine of equality in so far as it relates to equality of opportunity. The cynic may deny it and the unfortunate may doubt it, but the man of faith, the patriot, will ever hold it as a sound and precious truth, altho he knows that equality of opportunity does not mean equality of condition or attainment. This gospel of equality of opportunity is the modern Jacob's ladder on which are seen ascending and descending, not angels, but boys and girls, men and women. Who are these that are descending? They are the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those men and women who heard the call of opportunity and who, thru heroic effort and merit, climbed to the very top, honored by the people as worthy leaders, and blessed as noble benefactors, but whose offspring lost the gleam of the star and the call of opportunity, and foolishly assumed that achievement and merit can be transmitted from father to son, and stupidly erred in thinking that in America positions of social and civic preferment are hereditary. So down they come, some of them reluctantly, some of them resentfully, but nevertheless they descend to get a new point of view and a new start. And who are these who are ascending? They are those who have caught the glint of the star and have heard the call. Here is a lad whose father but yesterday was a workman on the section. This is the son of a fruit peddler. And this one caught his vision. and his zeal between the handles of a plow. These, all, are the children of high endeavor, the sons and daughters of American opportunity. Who, with all of its inconsistencies, with all of its disappointments, with all of its failures, would draw a curtain of doubt and discouragement over this glowing ideal? But while something of this national infirmity which we are considering may spring from this foundation doctrine of freedom and equality, we may discover if we look farther that much of it finds its origin in our educational creeds and philosophies. At about the same time that we were writing the governmental theories of Rousseau into our Declaration of Independence we were writing his educational ideas into our systems of education. But it took over a hundred years for his theories of extreme individualism, of revolt against authority in education, to exert any marked influence upon the prevailing methods in education. But reinforced by the sweet and gentle teachings of Pestalozzi and Froebel and systematized by Herbart the spirit of this great revolt against the ancient doctrines of authority and discipline and obedience has swept into and pervaded the entire body of our system of public education. No one who knows will undertake to deny that this great change has brought into public education a spirit of sympathy which it sadly needed. It changed the center of gravity of the educational solar system. It placed the child and his interests at the center, and made all other matterseducational theories, courses of study, and methods of instruction-revolve about him and take their meaning from him. It breathed into the nostrils of an austere and rigid form the breath of life and it became a living soul. All of this the most conservative will admit. They will go even farther and agree that this great rebirth in educational doctrines and procedure has added greatly to the strength of our democracy. But there are many, who are in no sense educational heretics, asking seriously whether we have not carried this spirit of individualism too far. There are those who are not wedded to the old régime in education who feel that modern society has suffered a great loss by this extreme reaction against authority and discipline and obedience. No one will deny that every child has certain inborn possibilities and potentialities which must be allowed to unfold according to the law of his own nature, but one may very properly question whether any individual, so developed, can live and work with his fellows, can play the part of a man in the affairs of a great nation, unless he has learned somewhere along the line that beyond his individual needs and desires there lie powerful social and civic forces and laws which will add to or subtract from his personal power and influence as he works with them or against them. No one desires a return of the old strait-jacket system of discipline. Everyone rejoices in the new freedom which has come to the child in the new methods of organization and control, but many thoughtful people are asking whether the movement has not gone too far, whether our children are not suffering a distinct loss in character thru the decay of obedience to rule and order, whether it is not breeding a weakness in the very quality of citizenship. Everyone wants the child to think out for himself everything that lies within his power. Everyone wants him to doubt, to question, to experiment until he finds a satisfactory answer. No one wants him to accept the opinions and commands of others with unthinking docility. No one asks that he stultify his own intelligence and smother his own will in servile, stupid obedience to another. But many believe profoundly that the greatest respect for authority is compatible with the highest degree of intelligence, that the strongest will is capable of the most instant and complete obedience to the will of others, that the very greatest degree of freedom comes only to him who recognizes and obeys established law and authority. It is very right that we should hold up before the youth of this country the opportunity that everyone has to become a leader in some field of endeavor. It furnishes a worthy ideal. It points out a definite star to which all may hitch their wagon. But we shall err greatly if we do not make it clear that there can be no leaders unless there are followers; that an army made up wholly of generals would be an impossible army. We must show that no one can lead unless he has learned how to follow. We must never lose sight of the fact that this great economic, social, and civic democracy demands group-thinking and group-acting; that its very safety depends upon the power of its citizens to fix their thought harmoniously upon a common aim, to concentrate their effort solidly toward a common end. I do not want to be misunderstood. I am not alarmed by every shadow cast by the clouds of war. I refuse to become panic-stricken at the sight of the very clouds themselves. I do not share that feeling of worshipful awe which some good people are exhibiting toward this new international god called Efficiency. How in the midst of this great test of the nations that word has been flung round the world! How it has been blazoned upon the very sky! A gentleman addressing a large audience in one of our cosmopolitan cities declared that unless the United States could effect thru its educational system the same degree of economic and governmental efficiency possessed by some of the European nations, Ichabod would be written across our door and the light of our great democracy would go out forever. Not a few of us will sympathize with the statement of the speaker who replied that rather would he contemplate the destruction of American democracy thru its liberty-loving, wasteful, blundering incompetence than assist in compelling it to that fatal form of efficiency which is driving some European nations on to their certain ruin. Not one of us desires that the American government shall become so compactly articulate that like an ivory ball it shall take its directions and angles of reflections from a cue held in one man's hand. But we shall be untrue to the sacred trust committed to us as leaders in public education if we do not weigh carefully the meaning of that great word efficiency in its relation both to our educational system and to our government. We may discover that a very great deal of the thing which that word signifies can be appropriated by us with profit to our schools and to our nation. We may discover that thru the shifting of the emphasis in some of our theories of education and thought, the redirection of some of our methods of instruction and control, we shall attain that kind of efficiency which is the essence of a real democracy-individual freedom with respect for authority, personal independence with loyal acknowledgement of leadership, the greatest degree of intellectual and civic liberty, joined with the most profound respect for law and order. WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE WORLD NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER, PRESIDENT, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, [Abstract from Newspaper Reports] Have you really considered how profoundly every one of us must be affected by what is going on in the world? The day that marked the opening of the present great war in Europe marked also the opening of the great |